Bye, bi biphobia
Content warning: this blog post discusses intimate partner violence, from the perspective of the person who experienced it. Please look after yourself as you read through this piece, and remember, the helpline is available to provide support 24/7. Call or webchat any time.
A couple of months ago, in an online group for women and non-binary people who date or are curious about hooking up with women, someone asked: ‘What are red flags in relationships between women?’
Good question. We all know red flags are signs that someone isn’t safe to be with, but are they different in relationships between women?
The answers came thick and fast:
"She stops you seeing your mates"
"She checks up on you all the time"
"She says mean stuff to you"
"She stops you wearing clothes you feel great in"
"She says she’s only jealous cos she loves you"
Somewhere near the middle of the dozens of comments, someone piped up:
"She says she’s bisexual."
The comment stayed up for days, until it was removed by the group admins. I was jolted, because it sounded just like the excuses made by my lesbian girlfriend, more than twenty years ago in our small women’s community. She could pull the "it’s so hard to date a bisexual woman who might run off with a man" card and get nods of recognition – and permission for controlling behaviour – from some of her friends who felt the same.
But things are better now, right?
It’s not like comments like this only happen in Takatāpui and Rainbow communities. Bisexual+ women are still seen as dishonest, confused and a bit slutty which make us perfect targets for sexual pressure and abuse in our relationships – no matter who we date.
Bisexual+ people are more than four times more likely to be the target of violence in families and more than eight times more likely to be sexually assaulted as straight people in Aotearoa. If I had ten bucks for every dude who’s suggested a threesome when he heard my sexuality or suggested I might be trisexual, "you know, you’ll try anything sexual" well, let’s just say I might not shop in Pak n Save.
So red flags *are* the controlling things that online group suggested; partners trying to isolate you, controlling where you go or what you wear, undermining you. But biphobia or thinking bisexual+ people are worth less because of our sexuality also helps shape every red flag for us.
What the red flag actions do, over time, is chip away at what you think you deserve, your sense of self. When I told someone about my abusive ex years after I left, they said ‘you would never have accepted that from a man.’
Which didn’t really help.
Yet I’ve never experienced any form of abusive, controlling stuff from male partners. So why from a woman?
I don’t mean I am responsible for my ex’s violence. She never accepted my sexuality. She used her jealousy to justify control and had no way to manage feeling angry beyond violence. I am not the only woman she’s abused. The women’s community we were part of in the early 1990s treated bisexual+ women with disdain. We were ‘pre-lesbian’, as they used to say.
But she was the first person I fell in love with, and it took me a long time to leave her.
There were lots of other things going on, of course. I had no family support, in fact at the time my family had kicked me out because I was queer. I was poor, and so were all my friends. So there was nowhere, literally nowhere, to go for help. I didn’t even call what was happening domestic violence, because I was a feminist, and we knew that it was men’s violence that needed to stop.
Most of my friends didn’t want to spend time with us anymore, because she made it so horrible. All of which made it difficult to recognize her behaviour for what it was.
A week after I left her, I looked at my naked body, covered in gashes, cuts and bruises. Pissed off when a friend gave me a present, she’d yelled at me ‘so many people love you’ as she threw me onto a picket fence. Her violence was getting worse, no doubt. I wasn’t afraid of her, but I had so much shame, from covering up her violence, from being convinced by her that it was my fault. For a time, she had successfully whittled away my sense of what I deserved, and that was much easier to do, because the rest of the world was biphobic too.
What brought me back? The friends who loved me, and love me still. Realising her violence was her violence. Putting down the shame and talking about her behaviour, and knowing, *knowing* that I didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Having relationships with people of all genders that have been loving, safe and glorious. And last but not least, challenging biphobia and celebrating bisexuality and all forms of queerness, everywhere.
Sandra Dickson (she/they) is an autistic, Pākehā, gender non-conforming woman, bogan and bisexual, who works in violence prevention for Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura – Outing Violence.
If any of this story has resonated with you, either for your own experience or that of someone you know, please reach out. You deserve to be loved, you deserve to be respected and you deserve to have autonomy and control of your own life. The team on the Are You OK helpline can support you, from trying to unpick what you’re experiencing, right through to helping you to navigate support systems. Call or webchat any time.